iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

I noticed the issue when testing Halide app with the 3x lens on my 13 Pro and my wife’s 13 Max in my study room. The difference in image quality is day and night. But in other scenarios the stock app seems better most of the time.

I didn’t find out that Halide always automatically selected f2.8 while the stock Camera app always fixed at f1.5 (in this same room and lighting condition) until last night.

And yet they wiull tell you that their iphone is fine and more capable than the 12. I do not need to perform the test I see it. I am a mac user since 2006 and also a phographer. This is not right and they need to address this right now.

Also I found another way to check the processing. Shoot a live photo and make key photo another one from the batch, you will see that it is not processed and it is very very soft.

I showed my samples the best I could.

The instructions I posted are very clear and make precise reproductible results. If you don't trust that I correctly touched the display to select the focus area, I encourage you and the other non-believer to replicate the test with whatever scene you want and skills you think you have.

>the camera photo does what it can to make a sharp photo out of a less than optimal sensor image.

that's exactly what it has been said before, that's exactly what EVERYONE HERE IS COMPLAINING ABOUT and I hope this is a batch of bad camera modules and apple would make a recall program.

it's not relevant what magazines and blogs have raved about the camera.

it's two thousand people complaining about the very same thing. in real world by extrapolation this can be 200.000 devices.

we don't even know if it affects you, since you even refuse to do this very basic test case that would at least clear the mystery of "my phone is amazing" type of replies you keep telling. if it's so amazing, do show us the results of the proposed test case. if you have nothing to hide, do the test. it's simple.

about the Genius Bar. there is no Genius Bar in my country, there are AASP and they replaced my camera. with no change.

[Edited by Moderator]

ItWasBetterBefore wrote:

it's not relevant what magazines and blogs have raved about the camera.

it's two thousand people complaining about the very same thing. in real world by extrapolation this can be 200.000 devices.

Which even at your extrapolated from thin air number of 200,000 is an absolutely tiny fraction of iPhone 13 customers. with Apple shipping around 49 million in Q3 2021 alone according to market analysts.

How many of them are 13 pro max? Try the test I wrote earlier it is very easy. Shoot a Live Photo and edit it. Just pick another key photo and you will come up with a very soft image. Try it, it is very easy. Something is wrong with either the processing or the lens. My guess is the lens. It is too soft.

I'm curious why you think anyone needs to do your little test to validate your unhappiness with the cameras on iPhone 13 Pro? I have posted enough images I've taken with my iPhone, which I think are excellent. It's clear you're not happy with the cameras on your phone, but no matter how many people do your little test, it's not going to make you happier with your iPhone. And since this is a user to user only forum, which Apple (with the exception of moderators) doesn't participate in, no matter how many people you try to convince of the issues you believe are present, it won't change anything at all on your phone.

Come on guys, this doesn't really make sense or help anybody. As we can read here, there are quite a number of people who aren't happy with the camera of their iPhone 13 pro and two, who are happy. And if the iPhone 13 pro fits the expectations, they had, hey, that's just perfect.

For me, using iPhones since the first one back in 2007 and doing photography as part of my job, it looks different. The results of the iPhone 12 Pro Max made me let my DSLRs stay at home in more and more situations. The results of the 13 Pro Max don't. Maybe for most of the iPhone users who only look at the pictures on their iPhone screen, it works. For me, it doesn't quite as good as before.

Using 3rd party Apps and RAW and turning off the automatic macro switch helped a lot and maybe, we will see an HDR off option in the future. Anyway, the iPhone 12 was more "pro" than the new one. And I think, that's the point we are here for to discuss. How to deal with it, how to enhance the output. And yes, maybe those who are satisfied with their phones might lean back and just enjoy their perfect photos, instead of telling on and on again that for them everything is good. Cause this doesn't really solve the problem or helps the others dealing with it.

I see this "Pro" argument tossed around a lot, and the larger issue is there is no strict definition of what "Pro" means.

An ever-increasing amount of "Pro" photographs end up on Facebook and Instagram or other sources online, and many of the images posted here are certainly completely suited for that.

If you mean "Pro" as could you use your iPhone 13 Pro to shoot a wedding and leave your DSLR/Mirrorless full frame camera home? Not at 12 MP resolution.

Still, you could certainly shoot stills and the video from the iPhone 13 family of devices is on par with many other digital video cameras, even professional 4K models.

I can certainly understand how some would prefer a more RAW image with less processing, and it seems there are options, from shooting in ProRAW to shooting in a third-party app to get that.

If you want to discuss that, no one would have an issue with that, it's more when people post that the camera is either "defective" or "broken"; it is not.

It's not about me not being happy with the camera. I am firmly convinced that there is a fault in the camera module or the telephoto lens.

Maybe it's possible that other users have other lenses or sensors that are defect.

Writing here that the camera is great and putting everything into perspective and subliminally accusing the users of faulty operation does not help anyone.

I have now noticed that my iPhone 13 Pro's telephoto lens is barely able to take a picture even in the best lighting conditions when the wide-angle lens is covered.

If I don't cover the wide angle lens, the most I get is a 3x digital zoom image. This then looks like an oil painting image.

I did the same test with an iPhone 11 Pro, the telephoto lens gave good images after I covered the wide angle lens.

What bothers me a bit is that there is a function active in the iPhone or camera module or in the iOS that overwrites a defective camera module. It feels like a deception to me as a user. If I wasn't an ambitious amateur photographer, I might not have noticed it.

You are imposing your personal definition of "better" upon the results.

Your idea of "better" is not everyone's.

Personally, I find the camera to be better, much better. You disagree, and that's fine.

That however doesn't make it defective or broken.

As I already wrote, it was a test in daylight, i.e. best lighting conditions.

I am NOT dissatisfied with the fact that my telephoto lens subjectively takes bad pictures. I am dissatisfied with the fact that my telephoto lens takes NO pictures at all!

Can you perform one test on your phone? I just tested right now and this is so so so weird. If you cover the wide lens and you try to zoom in to more than 3x you get no picture at all. It is like that there is no telephoto lens there at all. If you try to zoom out to 0.5x it works and switches to the ultra-wide. You can clearly see the transition when the camera switches to the ultra wide but you do not get this transition when it switches to the telephoto. It only digital zooms using the wide camera module.

My workaround to the bad IQ of 3x lens shot with stock Camera app is to pull down EV by one or two step; this somehow hints the app to stick to 3x lens by exposing with higher ISO or slower shutter. The image will be sharp and natural as expected; it may often be somewhat under exposed but you can easily pull up the shadow area without impact to overall IQ.

Note that the better way of stepping down EV is swiping up the live window to reveal the hidden control bar and press the EV compensation button (a circle with + and - sign in it). A traditional EV scale will pop up, allowing user to adjust the EV in discrete 0.3 step.

This workaround doesn't always works, and will surely fail if the subject plane is not far enough (this sounds making sense but Apple's digital zoom processing is far far behind Google's; the sharpness is definitely worse than just shooting with 1x and zooming it later in decent image editor).

Also notes that night mode may kick in when Camera decides that the field of view is too dark even for the f1.5 wide lens; in this case, Camera will usually stick to 3x lens exposing in one or more seconds, giveing out bright and sharp enough image.

But what a pain to learn this nonsense lesson!

I came from iPhone 6s so I didn't know Apple's auto-switching-from-telephoto-to-wide smartness and never encountered it in any real camera hooked with a zoom lens.

I was very disappointed to find out the IQ of its 3x lens at 77mm is much less sharper than my loved Cannon G7X zoomed only at 50mm (but not really frustrated since smartphone camera could never been in the same ballpark as the pocketable G7X).

There is no way I could attribute this bad IQ to it's been shot with zooming the wide lens, I didn't notice at that time any visual transitions from 3x lens to 1x lens (the switching is so seamless, an Apple magic show), and how am I supposed to check the parameter if it was shot with a 77mm lens? In the info pane there was that '77mm' supposed to be focal length, that 'Wide Camera -- 26 mm f1.5' lens info did not trigger alarm to me who never owned a smartphone with more than one lens.

I didn't figure the root cause of bad 3x IQ until I shot in exactly the same scene and lighting condition using Halide for evaluating apps offering more manual controls. The IQ from Halide is not to be competed with G7X in 55mm zoom but definitely much better than those shot with built-in app.

This forced me to carefully compare the exposure parameters and the first thing I noticed is stock app's f1.5 vs Halide's f2.8, and still didn't notice the lens used were different, because I never saw this kind of thing in my whole life in photography. Aperture, shuttle speed, even ISO may be adjusted depending on the exposure mode, but how can the lens be swapped or zoom setting be changed silently?

So my theory at that instant was the 3x lens is way more blurrier when wide open and Halide developer knew it and decided to always fall back to f2.8 and compensate it with stepping up ISO or slowing down shutter speed. I even proudly announced to my wife that I finally figured out the cause of the bad IQ of telephoto lens and requested a kiss honor.

A few hours later, while I was posting my finding and writing about the 3x lens resolution in f1.5 vs f2.8, it occurred to me that the widest aperture of 3x lens is 2.8! There is no way the stock Camera app could shoot 3x lens in f1.5 and no smartness of Halide developer in avoiding it.